The Road Ahead

People often ask me what lies ahead for Russia. This question always surprises me. It suggests that people think historians are part prophet, as if knowing a lot about the past means you can predict the future. Or maybe this attitude has something to do with the influence of the Marxist approach to history: since society is governed by ironclad and irrevocable economic laws, once you know those laws, you can predict how society will develop.

I don’t buy it. Of course, we can see historical patterns, but whenever I hear “it’s ’37 all over again” or “it’s just like in Hitler’s Germany,” or even “remember the French Revolution and the Jacobin Terror,” I can’t help but shudder. The world is changing, society is developing, and people are evolving. Of course, there are some traits shared by all people – ancient Egyptians, Parisians during the French Revolution, or Gulag prisoners – but today’s world is a different place. For example, now the entire planet knows about how Alexei Navalny was poisoned and flown out of Russia, or how Belarusian activist Maria Kalesnikava smiled when she was handed down a lengthy prison sentence. That changes things.

And this is what makes the course of history so unpredictable. I have seen proof of this many times with my own eyes. In March 1985, nobody could have predicted that perestroika would make its thunderous arrival the very next month. In August 1991, the Soviet Union was a tinderbox, so I can’t say that the attempt to overthrow Gorbachev was unexpected, but the fact that the putsch was over in just three days – that was a total surprise. At the time, some people had been expecting a long and deadly civil war.

People were also taken by surprise by the chain of events that started on December 4, 2011, a dreary winter day on which elections to the State Duma were being held across Russia. The mood was gloomy, although of course we all tried to keep each other’s spirits up as we set out to vote “for any party other than the party of crooks and thieves.” I remember that my son posted an offer on Facebook to drive anyone to the polls who had trouble getting there. But it felt a bit like a lot of fuss and bother that wouldn’t change anything.

That evening, I flew to London in a very despondent mood. Early the following morning I received a text message from home: “There you are sleeping, and here we’re having a revolution.” Few pieces of news could have struck me as more far-fetched. Of course the movement that sprung up after the falsification of elections was not a real revolution, if only because it did not achieve success. A rebellion is never successful; if it were it would be called something else.

Whatever you want to call it, what transpired in our country between December 5, 2011, and March 5, 2012, was utterly unforeseen and amazing. For several months we believed that we could quickly, easily, joyously, and in good faith change everything. It was a time when white ribbons adorned people’s lapels and festooned their cars, when Muscovites, uplifted by a sense of solidarity, joined hands to form a “Big White Circle” – a nine-mile human chain lining the Garden Ring road.

Today many say that we were naive and that what we were doing was silly and pointless. But, as a historian, I know that it was anything but. What happened back then was a marvelous manifestation of the power of the human spirit by people not content to accept injustice. I remember the crowds of people waiting in line outside Mikhail Prokhorov’s campaign headquarters at the Central Telegraph building to receive “mandates” authorizing them to serve as election observers. They had come from across Moscow Oblast: some had taken hours-long trips only to wait many more hours while we did our best to keep up with the demand. They waited patiently, even though they faced long trips on busses and commuter trains back to their towns, where they would fight to make sure that the upcoming presidential elections would be fair. In this, they did not succeed.

Of course, on the subject of history’s unpredictability, as we joined huge and absolutely peaceful and warmhearted demonstrations in December and February, with people joking, laughing, and sending witty jibes in Putin’s direction, we could not conceive of the possibility that a peaceful demonstration held on Bolotnaya Square would be violently broken up, and that the term “Bolotnik” would come to be synonymous with “political prisoner.” We were blindsided by the wave of arrests, not to mention the chauvinism and hatred that would sweep Russia after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, or the machinery of oppression that would be cranked up and take our country to where it stands today – a place where people are imprisoned for reposting something on social media, where Russia helps its neighbor’s political police kidnap people, and where, one after another, anyone with an independent voice is pushed out of the country.

I started here with the idea of history’s unpredictability. We truly don’t know what twists and turns await us. One thing is certain: many of them will be tragic. But I believe in the people with whom I stood in that “Big White Circle,” and in those who stood in line to become election observers. I am certain that Russian has a future to match its past greatness.

Circumstances dictate that this is my final Chronicle item for Russian Life magazine. It is with sadness that I bid farewell to the readers of this magazine. I will always remember my years at Russian Life with fondness. I look forward to a time when the editors of Russian Life will ask me to write an article looking back on further surprising twists to Russian history, to a day when I can write of a new period of hope and freedom in my country.